You Heard It Here First!

September 22, 2010

“Why Hitler Lost the War”

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Reviewing Oprah’s segment on Waiting for Superman, Jay Matt [oops] just announced that the war of ideas is over and the unions have lost.

Hmm, where have I heard that before? Oh, yeah, that’s right – I’ve been saying it for a year and a half.

Permission to come aboard, granted!

The unions are primed for a major defeat. If you listen carefully, you can actually hear the voice-over from Mortal Kombat crying out “FINISH HIM!”

What the movement needs now is a fearless, dynamic organizational leader with a smart plan to get a truly universal voucher program (no more watering it down) enacted in a state in the next, say, three years, and who’s determined to spend the next three years doing nothing but putting that plan into action. There are states where that can happen. But it won’t happen unless somebody picks up the ball.

Or am I just waiting for Superman?

3 Comments | charter schools, journalism, money myth, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Coverage of Administrative Bloat Keeps Expanding

September 3, 2010

I was interviewed by Glenn Reynolds on Pajama Media’s Instavision.

And The Economist chimes in.

For a full list of coverage go here.

1 Comment | money myth | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Why Teachers Are Being Laid Off

August 23, 2010

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2010, ...

If you want to know why teachers are being laid off in California (even if teaching has remained one of the most secure jobs nationwide) you might want to check out this new $578 million high school in LA Unified School District.  As we’ve written before on JPGB, buildings don’t teach kids, people do.  Given the way school districts squander their resources, maybe they’ll soon need another $26 billion in Edujobs from Congress (read: taxpayers).

[CORRECTION -- Oops.  This is actually a photo of a different (and much less costly) high school in LA, the Visual and Performing Arts High School.  I can only imagine that the new $578 million high school is plated in gold.]

Thanks to Stuart for finding a photo of the $578 million high school.  It doesn’t look plated in gold so I guess the gold is on the inside:

9 Comments | money myth, politics | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

A Little Context for OFA’s Sob Story

August 10, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

The latest item making the rounds is an e-mail from Organizing for America, the old Obama campaign appendage now grafted into the DNC. A teacher from Ambler, Pa. pleads that if we don’t shovel a huge chunk of money into the EduJobs rathole, it’s theoretically possible that someone “like me” could potentially lose a job.

With that special blend of entitlement mentality and self-righteousness only the blob has mastered, she solemnly intones:

I’m not a special interest. I’m a teacher.

(Portentious boldface in original.)

Jim Geraghty would like you to be aware of the numbers featured above – this teacher’s school district, Wissahickon, has an average salary almost half again as high as the state average salary. And that’s before we look at benefits, which are much richer for teachers than in the private sector. Geraghty remarks:

When the local board of education spends money at a rate that the local tax base cannot afford, those teachers who refuse to adjust their salaries to reality do start to look like a special interest.

Mike Petrilli hammers the point home:

Your job could easily be saved if your union leaders were willing to accept some modest concessions. (Even a salary freeze might do the trick.)  But when teachers demand job protections, generous benefits, and salary increases in the midst of a recession…well, that’s expecting special treatment, indeed.

Not to mention JPGB’s own Matt Ladner, commenting on the instantly-famous chart comparing private sector job destruction in the current crisis to government job protection:

The yellow line just put another $10 billion on the credit card of the red line. Let them eat cake!

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for these people.

3 Comments | money myth, politics, teacher pay, teacher union | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Enlow: It’s Bailout v. Vouchers

May 25, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Need an antidote to Whinegarten in the Journal? Try Robert Enlow in USA Today:

If this president and Congress really wanted to help children and benefit teachers, it would emancipate students so their parents could use their own tax dollars to obtain educational services wherever they wanted — at charter schools, virtual schools or with a voucher to transfer to the private school of their choice. But that’s not really what they want. Instead, they want to maintain a status quo that is designed to benefit the adults rather than brighten the future of children.

It’s not just this $23 billion bill, it’s the whole stinking system that’s one big slow-motion perpetual bailout. What are the odds you’ll get serious change without school choice? 3,720 to none.

4 Comments | money myth, teacher union, vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Never Tell Her the Odds

May 20, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Today’s Journal wastes precious op-ed space on Randi Weingarten’s whiney pitch for an education bailout. It’s tough out there for a public school bureaucrat trying to keep his (or her) fiefdom from shrinking – but they should have thought of that before setting off on a multiple-decade teacher overhiring binge. Of course there are teacher layoffs!

Whinegarten wants $23 billion. With the enormous geyser of money we pour into the system every year, will a piddling $23 billion make any difference to performance? Forget about 3,720 to one – not even C-3P0 can calculate those odds.

Delightful schadenfreude bonus: Some mischievous elf in the Journal‘s offices decided to place the Whinegarten piece directly below Daniel Henninger’s column singing the praises of Christo Rey. Are they laying off teachers? I would ask whether they’re likely to hire any of the teachers who got laid off from the public system, but I won’t – because the public system is so dysfunctional it’s more likely to lay off good teachers than bad ones.

6 Comments | charter schools, money myth, teacher union | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Memories of the Way We Were

April 15, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Today is tax day, and if you are like me, it is your favorite day to throw a fit about paying them. It’s worth keeping in mind that about half of your state budget winds up going to K-12, and that those K-12 budgets are incredibly bloated by historic standards.

So we used to employ 2.36 teachers for every non-teacher in American public schools. Today, it is close to 1 to 1.

We must be packing students into classrooms like sardines in order to afford this vast legion of non-teachers! Except, um, not so much. That ratio fell despite hiring far more teachers per pupil. And thus we move from an inflation adjusted spending per pupil total of $2,377 in 1950 to over $12,000 per pupil today.

Jay and Greg noted in Education Myths that the notion of a lost golden age of public education is a myth. At least, that is, in terms of academic achievement (best we can tell, it has been flat). In terms of efficiency however, there was a golden age, and it has indeed been lost.

2 Comments | money myth | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

RTTT… Yawn

March 4, 2010

The Race to the Top finalist states were announced today.  15 states are in the hunt for some portion of $2.3 billion, which is less than one-half of a percent of annual K-12 education spending.  It is rounding error.

The contest may shape state and local education policy debates where something might actually happen, but no one should be fooled into thinking that this money is going to have any significant, direct effect.

But it will certainly keep the chattering class busy with excitement.  My reaction is… Yawn.

12 Comments | money myth | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

A Mind is An Expensive Thing to Waste

January 31, 2010

Economists Rick Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann presented a paper last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, showing just how much in dollars and sense it costs not to raise student achievement.  If the U.S. could increase its average score on the PISA test by 25 points over the next twenty years (less than Poland did over the last six years) it “would result in an increase in the U.S. GDP of $40 trillion over the lifetime of the generation born in 2010.” 

Now that would be a stimulus plan.  But remember that average U.S. students achievement for 17 year olds has been stagnant for at least four decades despite more than doubling real expenditures per pupil.  So this stimulus plan requires something other than money.  It requires structural changes in public education to produce more achievement for every dollar already spent.

The new report by Hanushek and Woessmann builds on an earlier study that you can see in this Education Next article.

1 Comment | economics, money myth | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Let Me Help You Out Here…

January 15, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

An outfit called the Arizona Education Network took issue with a piece I wrote showing that Arizona K-12 spending has increased by 20% since 2000 while math and reading NAEP scores are up by less than 1% during approximate same period.

Unsheathing their flaming sword of justice, they wrote the following:

Update: Debunking Latest Education Spending Report by Special Interest Group – AZ student population up 22.7% while funding only grows 20%

January 12th, 2010

US Census Department Figures show that the Arizona population increased 28.6% from April of 2000 to July 2009.

During the same period, average daily membership (the term used to refer to the total enrollment of students through the first 100 days of the school year) in Arizona schools increased 22.7%.  (According to a report to the Arizona Senate) .

So when special interest groups decry a 20% increase in education funding in the 2000-2009 period, they should notice that this increase did not even keep up with the increase in the number of school children in Arizona during the same period.

**AHEM**

Let me help you out here guys, since you seem new to this whole policy analysis thing. As a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to read something before you criticize it. Sometimes, that will include clicking on hyperlinks when they are provided.

For example, if you had taken the trouble to do so in this case, you would have gone to an Arizona legislative website and learned that I had used an inflation adjusted spending per pupil number to calculate the 20% increase.

Keep at it though- some day you guys may be ready to swim to the deep end of the pool. 

22 Comments | money myth, school funding | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

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